


The Winthrop Child

by imitateslife



Category: Victor Frankenstein (2015)
Genre: Apprenticeship, Based on a deleted scene, Canon Continuation, Gen, In which Victor takes responsibility for one of his experiments, Mentor/Protégé, No Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 14:43:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9239423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imitateslife/pseuds/imitateslife
Summary: As a meticulous scientist, Victor Frankenstein cannot allow his only surviving experiment to remain unmonitored. Upon his return to England, Victor arranges to take an apprentice. Based on a deleted scene.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based around the deleted scene called "The Baby Winthrop". If you have not seen it, I urge you to purchase either the blu-ray or the HD iTunes version of "Victor Frankenstein" to see it. It is well worth the money, I assure you. If you don't plan to purchase a version of the film that contains bonus features, then I urge you read the original script, which can be found here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/276730994/FRANKENSTEIN-by-Max-Landis-Second-Draft-dated-May-23rd-201 . The scene can be found on pages 67-73. The filmed product is superior to the written draft, in my opinion. 
> 
> If you have no plans to watch or read "The Baby Winthrop" scene, allow me to summarize: Finnegan tasks Victor and Igor with reanimating a dead child as a test to see if they can follow orders. When the pair succeeds, Finnegan then orders them to kill the infant. Igor refuses, but Victor agrees to take care of it and successfully dupes his benefactor into believing the child dead, so that Igor can return the baby to its parents.

Upon a snowy hill in one of London’s many parks, two children played. They were boys, no older than ten, dressed in shabby brown coats and thick, woolen scarves. The younger was trying with all his might to topple his brother; the elder allowed himself to be felled only after a few minutes’ struggle.

“Yours, sir?” a woman asked, nodding towards the boys.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein, newly returned to London from Ingolstadt University startled at the voice beside him. Since leaving the docks, he had not spoken to a soul and no one had spoken to him. Years of Bavarian winters and poor-quality whisky had carved him, made him more angular, thinner. The medical degree he’d always craved and finally secured had not eased his soul and there was something of a restless wanderer about him.

“Your eyes never settle on this plane, Herr Doktor,” one woman had told him as he checked up upon her and her month-old daughter. “I do not think this world would ever be enough for you. I expect you to disappear one day to the next and we will all wonder what became of the sullen man who delivered our children and cured our coughs – if he was a man or a legend.”

He hadn’t laughed then. Already in England he was a legend: not a benevolent doctor, but a monster. He had told no one except the customs officer his name when his ship docked in London. The man had peered curiously at Victor’s passport, but if he had anything to say, he kept his own counsel. Victor did not laugh at the notion of being legendary.

But he laughed now at the notion of being a father. The old woman sitting next to him under a hat so large it almost distracted from a face that may have once been pretty but was now only old, startled at his reaction. Victor’s laugh was not the warm sound anyone who knew him in his younger days might recognize. It was harsh, humorless, as if Ingolstadt had bled him dry of what optimism he’d possessed.

Maybe it had.

“I am not a father,” he told the woman. “No.”

His eyes settled back upon the boys who were now throwing fistfuls of snow at one another, not even bothering to make snowballs. He’d followed them here from their home on Devonshire Road. Before going to Igor – to see his dearest friend and his private practice and his pretty, ex-acrobat wife – there was an experiment, whose results were long overdue. It had been lucky Victor had seen the Winthrops leave their meager little home. He would not have been able to pick Samuel Winthrop out of a crowd. The boy, with his mop of dark hair and skinny frame was nothing remarkable to look at. Not upon first glance. He was like every other poor boy in London and in a few years’ time, he would be fit for either school or the workhouse, whatever the family could afford. But the longer Victor watched the boy, the more he thought that there was _something_ remarkable about him. At five – or was it six? – he was agile and fast. He may not have been stronger than his older brother, but Victor watched the way Samuel’s keen eyes put together his surroundings to leverage them in a snowball fight. He saw the way that – though his parents and brother remained oblivious to Victor’s presence – Samuel was surely aware. He occasionally went stiff like a pointer and looked directly at the bench. Perhaps that was why the old woman – who now eyed Victor carefully – had thought he was the boy’s father.

He was so much more.

Victor could not forget that night in Finnegan’s lab: the night he had succeeded in bestowing life upon lifeless flesh. He had not created the Baby Winthrop, but been given the child’s corpse with the expectation that he should resurrect the infant. And with Igor’s help, Victor had succeeded.

His only true success to date.

And what a success! The baby had breathed, but not cried. Against Finnegan’s wishes, the child had been restored to its – _his_ – family. A healthy child like that, with a keen mind and agile body: wasn’t that what all parents wished for? Victor thought of his own, misbegotten children. Monstrosities, the lot of them. Reanimated masses of flesh with no life behind their eyes. He’d been forced to kill them both – Gordon and the Prometheus – and though he dreamt of creating something rational, intelligent, and alive, his experiments in Germany had not borne fruit. In England, perhaps he would not try again. Instead, he was to join Igor as his partner at Igor’s ever-growing private practice. Their correspondence over the years had been sparse, but not unsentimental. Igor’s offer of a job came at such a time when Victor badly needed it. His patient had been right the world he’d known in Ingolstadt was not enough for him. A man could only live alone and friendless, the local oddity for so many years before abandoning such a post. It was unbearable. Igor’s most recent letter included a sorry account of his father’s failing health and impending death, the inheritance that only Victor stood to take. As little as Victor wanted to see his father, he understood one thing: he had hidden from his responsibilities for too many years.

But the responsibility he cared about above others, above his commitment to his dearest Igor and his odious father, was his responsibility to his creations and to his work. He leaned heavily upon his walking stick and eased up the hill towards Mrs. Winthrop. He had a proposition for her and her youngest son.

“My name,” he heard himself saying to the mother who jumped upon the sight of a brightly-clad gentleman moving swiftly towards her and her children. She almost fell off the rock she was sitting upon. “Is Doctor Victor Frankenstein. And I would like to offer an apprenticeship to your youngest son. I work in a private practice on London’s West End, under Doctor Igor Straussman. And your son, Samuel, has great potential.”

He extended one of his calling cards to her. She shifted the infant clutching her chest aside slightly. A trembling hand took the card and looked at it. Victor wondered if Mrs. Winthrop could read from the way her brow puckered at the words.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Samuel is just a boy… Barely six years old, he-“

“Is a remarkable child,” Victor said.

“He’s a miracle,” the mother murmured. “I cannot part with my son now.”

“You will be compensated and he will be… well looked after… Mrs. Winthrop-“

“Sir, forgive me,” she said. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. The last doctor to take my son away… I never thought we’d see him again… And by a miracle he was delivered home alive and safe.”

“Madam.” Victor stood up straighter. “I assure you: it was an act of science, no miracle, that your son was returned to you alive.”

For a moment, the woman seemed at a loss. Her brown eyes dug for familiarity in Victor’s features, though both knew she would find none. Victor had saved her child’s life, but it had been Igor tasked with returning her son to her. She would no doubt recognize Dr. Straussman, but who was Dr. Frankenstein except a stranger? And then, suddenly, her lips parted. Victor expected her to nod, to thank him. Instead a small cry escaped her throat. This, in turn, made the child resting against her begin to cry.

“Is it true then?” she asked. “What everyone says?”

“That depends.” There was a sharp edge of impatience in Victor’s voice. “On what exactly everyone says. I have been gone from this country many years. I hardly know what the current gossip is.”

Mrs. Winthrop clutched her youngest tighter against her shoulder.

“I have heard your name before,” she said. “They say that Dr. Frankenstein can raise the dead.”

Victor could not fight the smile upon his lips. It twitched into place before spreading and revealing too many of his teeth to be anything but prideful. Mrs. Winthrop choked back another cry. Victor’s smile faded and, as he shushed her son many years ago, tried to soothe her. He put a hand to her free shoulder and fussed over her as if she were a small child.

“Is my son the monster everyone talks about?” she asked wretchedly. “Oh, _God_ …”

“Your son is not a monster,” Victor said. _I have seen monsters before._ “But he is a wonder. I ask you to but name your price to allow him as my apprentice.”

Mrs. Winthrop looked past Victor’s shoulder at the boys playing in the snow, insensible to the adult conversation only feet away. She bit her lip and her stiffened shoulder under Victor’s hand went slack.

“The children’s father died in an accident six months ago,” she said. “Couldn’t identify the body except by his pocket-watch. Had to have a closed casket… for the children’s sake. I know your Doctor Straussman. He attended me when I gave birth early, didn’t charge me a penny. I thought I recognized him – there was something familiar about him, but I never… we’re barely getting by as it is now, what with winter being so harsh. We didn’t even have a goose for Christmas dinner. And I’m sure it was our last one together. The boys are to start at the workhouse upon the new year. Sammy’s too young, but the foreman does like to turn a blind eye when he can get himself a pair of hands…”

She did not cry, but he voice was thick with tears she ought to have shed some time ago. Victor was not often the sort to be moved to pity or charity. And yet he couldn’t tell if the ache in the pit of his stomach was concern that this woman would extort him or if it was because she and her children could very well die without his help or if it was simply that if Samuel died for a second time, Victor would lose the only scrap of evidence that creating life from death was possible. He lowered himself to his knees so that he could better look Mrs. Winthrop in the eyes.

“Let me make your son my apprentice,” he said. “And I will see to it that your family wants for nothing. A future as a physician is much more promising than that of a workman. And your son is special – to you and to me both. Let me.”

“You won’t take him now, will you?” she asked.

“I will give you twenty-four hours to think about it.” Victor released her and rose. “Patience is not a virtue I put much stock in.”

“I can’t read your card,” she confessed. “Sammy, he can read. Just a bit. More’n his brother, but, I don’t think he can read this-“

“Gower Street,” he said. “That’s where Dr. Straussman’s practice – mine, now, too, I suppose – is. You’ll find me there.”

He turned to leave and saw standing behind him – and much to close – Samuel Winthrop. The boy’s big, dark eyes looked up into Victor’s. Where the mother could find no familiarity, the boy looked at Victor as if his face was a home he had long searched for, but never known. The child smiled and, so, too, did Victor. For a moment, he felt softer than he had in a great many years.

“Are you really a doctor?” the little boy asked.

“I am,” Victor said.

An old defensiveness leaked into his voice. Victor had finished his medical degree abroad and that was something worth taking pride in, even if he could prove no other claim to greatness. He lifted his chin so that he stood even taller than Samuel. Victor was not a tall man, but in front of a child so young and small, he must have seemed a giant. But instead of being frightened, the little boy nodded as if granting Victor his approval.

“Are you very good?”

“That depends who you ask,” he said. “But I don’t _try_ to be wicked.”

Victor grinned and the boy, understanding in the way a clever child might, that a joke was made even if he did not understand the joke, laughed. Then he grew quiet and solemn.

“Mama,” he said, looking past Victor’s legs at his mother. “I want to be a doctor. If I had been a doctor, Father would have lived.”

“Sammy, we talked about this-“

“He would have!”

Victor crouched down for the second time. His bones protested movement and the cold – especially in places that had been injured over the years. Victor looked into the dark pools of Samuel Winthrop’s eyes. They were nothing like his own, light ones. Not in shape, not in color. But he recognized the grief, the intensity, the intelligence in them.

“You’re a very good son,” he said softly. “For mourning your father. I can help you be a doctor Samuel. ...I can see you like the sound of that. But you must promise me something…”

Samuel cocked his head to the side. He did not look at his mother, but Victor could imagine that behind him, the woman with the crying child was now also crying and ready to protest anything Victor asked her son to promise him.

“You mustn’t blame yourself for what happened to your father,” he said. “Promise me that you will only let the injustice of his death inspire you to save lives.”

“Yes,” Samuel said. He lifted his chin much the same way Victor had before. But then, perhaps remembering his manners, added, “Sir.”

Victor stood.

“You’ve a good son, Mrs. Winthrop,” he said. “He’ll make a fine doctor one day. I expect to see you both tomorrow.”

And upon that note, he descended the hill and returned to the cobbled stones below.  Then he walked towards Gower Street, where Igor and Lorelei and the medical practice would be waiting for him. His return to London was long overdue. Tomorrow, when Mrs. Winthrop and her children would appear upon his doorstep, when he was reunited again with Samuel, Victor thought he might even finally have found a plane upon which he could comfortably exist.


End file.
